Consider how much unnecessary time you or your staff are spending doing your company’s bookkeeping. For example – what if you spent 10 hours a week on bookkeeping tasks? And, what if out of those 10 hours, you are wasting 5 hours because of outdated processes, double and triple data entry, and managing stacks of paper files? That could add up to 260 hours a year! What could you and your staff do with an extra 260 hours a year? Here are 4 ways to save hours on your bookkeeping every week.

#1 – USE QUICKBOOKS ONLINE

If you are not currently using QuickBooks online, the time to start is NOW! You can save hours and get anytime, anywhere access to the financial aspects of your business with QBO.

#2 – CONNECT BANK AND CREDIT CARD ACCOUNTS TO QUICKBOOKS ONLINE

One of the simplest ways to save lots of data entry time is to connect your business bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online. Why? Because most of the information you need for each transaction is automatically downloaded for you – like the transaction date, amount, payee, and memo description.

Money in and money out transactions will download into QBO every day. You’ll be able to match banking transactions to transactions already entered in QuickBooks or you’ll be able to add transactions directly from your downloaded banking transactions.

#3 – ELIMINATE DATA ENTRY AND PAPER

Here’s where the magic happens. The best way to eliminate even more data entry and the absolute way to eliminate paper is to replace paper and manual transactions with electronic transactions. Here is how you can do it:

  • Stop using paper checks– My favorite tools for eliminating paper checks are Bill.com and Checkbook. Check out my blog posts (by clicking on the links) to learn more about these great apps.
  • Get paid online by your customers– Be sure to turn on the QuickBooks Payments option in QBO so that your customers can pay your invoices online.
  • Pay with debit card or credit card– Debit card and credit card transactions can be easily downloaded into QuickBooks Online and don’t require additional data entry. However, I would caution you to make sure that you have enough cash flow to pay for debit card transactions and to pay your credit card bill in full each month.

#4 – SPEND JUST 5 – 10 – 15 MINUTE INCREMENTS A DAY WORKING ON YOUR BOOKKEEPING

Most people who ‘DIY’ their bookkeeping wait until the last minute to work on it. Unfortunately, waiting till the last minute means that you will spend hours on your bookkeeping. You’ll also be missing out on valuable financial insights.

Spend 5 – 10 – 15 minutes a day working on your bookkeeping. It’s simple and painless. Each day you work on your bookkeeping in small increments of time. For example, it will take you about 5 minutes a day to work on your bank feeds (transactions downloaded to QBO from your bank and credit card accounts). That’s it! You’ll see how much more you’ll like bookkeeping when you spend just a few minutes a day working on it.